JAR Lecture to cover ‘How there got to be so many of us’

Professor Karen Kramer is presenting the XLVII Journal of Anthropological Research (JAR) Distinguished Lecture, “How there got to be so many of us: The evolutionary story of population growth and a human life history of cooperation,’’ on Thursday, Oct. 25 at 7:30 p.m. in the UNM Anthropology Lecture Hall, room 163.

She will also host a specialized seminar at noon on Friday, Oct. 26 in Anthropology room 248 on “Intergenerational cooperation, parenting and childhood.”

Associate Professor Karen Kramer

Both the lecture and seminar are free and open to the public.

Kramer is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Utah. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from The University of New Mexico and her postdoctoral fellow in Demography from UC Berkeley.

Her research focuses on the evolution of human sociality and behavior, with interests in cooperative breeding, parenting and childhood. Her current fieldwork is in a traditional Maya village in Yucatan, Mexico where she focuses on documenting and modeling children’s time allocation, juvenile cooperation, and more.

Kramer’s talk will focus on how evolved changes in the human diet, life history and cooperation are linked in a strategy that gives humans their demographic edge, and had made humans a successful species.

Founded by Professor Leslie Spier, the Journal of Anthropological Researchhas been published by The University of New Mexico since 1945 in the interest of general anthropology. It has been edited by the Leslie Spier Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Lawrence Straus, since 1995.